Reflection of a Man

Stanley Marcus was known the world over as an innovative marketer and retailer with a refined sense of taste and style whose leadership transformed his family's Dallas clothing store, Neiman Marcus, into a globally recognized arbiter of fashion. However, his refined sensibility was also expressed in a very private passion for photography, shared only with family and close friends. Marcus's daughter Jerrie Marcus Smith and his granddaughter Allison V. Smith celebrate this passion in Reflection of a Man, a representative selection of the thousands of photographs Marcus shot on business trips in Europe, on vacations in Mexico, and during family celebrations. These photographs underscore what we already know about the man in terms of an eye for elegance, a preoccupation with merchandising, and an enthusiasm for the enjoyment of life, but they also reveal a talent for capturing the purity of a moment and memorializing instances of beauty. In addition to the photographs, Oscar de la Renta, the couture fashion designer, relates his experience with the master of the art of the sale; Jack Lenor Larsen, the dean of modern fabric design, pays tribute to his long friendship with Marcus; and Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, critiques Marcus's photographs.